


Colorweave

by fabula_prima



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, Interracial Relationship, Psychoactive Drug Use, Recreational Drug Use, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 22:34:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13645821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabula_prima/pseuds/fabula_prima
Summary: Rylen returns from the Western Approach with a souvenir for his lady love.





	Colorweave

**Author's Note:**

> *Psychoactive drug use is tagged, but it is VERY mild.

Marguerite could smell upturned dust as she watched motes float in the sunbeams that illuminated Lady Montilyet’s office. Before she could feel the encroaching rumble or hear hooves and boots in an eager rhythm to return home, she could smell the sweet, aching aroma of earth being kicked up into clouds of dust beneath weary feet. Somewhere among the clouds, he squinted, failing to keep the sweat and grime from his already bloodshot eyes. She caught a glimpse of her translucent reflection in the window and found nothing of the world in her face. Smooth cheeks, plump lips, manicured brows perched above clear, watery eyes.

“Lady Dujardin? Marguerite?”

At Josephine’s call, the daydreamer lowered her eyes to find ink puddling in the middle of the letter she had been writing to Comtesse Carpentier. It had bled through a handful of clean parchment sheets, and she winced at the waste.

“Your mind is elsewhere, no?”

Lady Montilyet glanced wistfully toward the gates of Skyhold, far subtler than Marguerite in her anticipation.

“Distraction is no excuse. I will rewrite the letter to the Comtesse at once.”

The Ambassador flicked her fingers haphazardly to divert from her smirk. “Begone, my dear. The Comtesse can wait.”

Before joining the Inquisition, Marguerite never rushed, never darted her eyes around in public, lest she look desperate or searching. Now, she watched her gilt satin slippers tap softly against the stone walkways, sink imprints into the well-traveled muddy paths that wove a labyrinth upon the fortress grounds. And when she reached the front parapet, she clung to the stone breathlessly while she scanned the foothills, covered in marching militia.

Often he rode at the back of the forces, to see to the safety of those who’d been injured. But today, he led, finally returning from the Western Approach.

> A longer visit, this time. Weeks. Blessed weeks after _months_ of missing you. I’ll come to you after the sun has set. Ready yourself, lass. I refuse to let you out of my sight.

Her heart thudded recklessly at the recollection of his last letter. A few short sentences brimming with promise and anticipation drove her to dig her fingertips into the rough limestone as she spotted his gleaming helmet.

The view telescoped about her as she willed his gaze to meet her own. “ _See me…look up, mon chere._ ” She chewed at the corner of her mouth, wrapping her lips around the airy endearment.

He tilted his head, caught sight of her, and winked.

Embers alighted behind her navel, sending flames licking up her throat and down her thighs. She had to lean against the stone wall for balance, but she wanted to lay flat on her back and stretch, just to accommodate the muchness she felt. Full of steam and sighs and warm laughter at the sight of his smiling eyes.

Eight months was simply too long. Too long without his touch, too long without his kiss, too long to let such a green relationship hang in the ether. Too long for him, no doubt, to refuse himself. She found herself with her arms crossed, picking at the embroidery of her sleeves. Jealousy aimed to sink its claws into her, so before it got the better of her giddy heart, she started a purposeful trek toward her modest chamber.

* * *

Never one to presume, she decided not to change out of her gown. It was all so fresh, still, and perhaps he wouldn’t visit. The sky looked like liquid fire with pink tendril clouds stretched thin and airy. As ominous as it was, she had daydreamed of sunsets for weeks. Peering through the small window, she spied the Commander’s office and wondered if the Knight-Captain was in there, too–giving a report, begging for relocation, sharing a laugh with a friend he no doubt missed. She watched until the sky’s fire turned to dark ash and the twilight began playing tricks on her eyes.

A pair of soft knocks at the door jerked her from the window. She longed to be confident, coy, relaxed and reading as she bid him enter. But she rushed to the door, paying no mind to decorum, and opened it with a wide swing.

He stood before her, in the midst of taking a deep breath. It leaked out of him in a quick gust as he smiled.

“Lady Marguerite.”

“Knight-Captain.”

His hair was slicked back, damp and shiny. His armor was absent, but his gloves remained. And though his boots were dusty, the rest of his clothing looked fresh.

“Though a knight without armor?”

“Will I be in need of it?”

A devilish smirk rose all the way up to suggestive eyebrows and Marguerite decided that he would have been most excellent at The Game, were he nobility.

“Of course not,” she replied, stepping aside to bid him entry. “It is only that you’ve just returned…I did not expect that you would have time to change.”

“And come to my lady carrying half the Western Approach in my breeches? You must think me a brute.”

His footsteps into the room were easy, hands clasped behind his back, chin raised with confidence. The odd tuft of hair above or below his ear, nestled at the nape of his neck, had begun to dry and curl and Marguerite could hardly resist smoothing her fingers through it. The simple knowledge of him taking time to bathe before seeing her quelled her nerves.

“Your lady?”

His face fell and his easy certainty faded into something that swept the floor from beneath her stomach.

“I only mean…I am sorry, Knight-Captain. You’ve been away so long. I was hesitant to assume…”

“Just Rylen, lass,” he insisted, venturing to lift a warm hand to her face. Not yet touching anything but the individual curled strands that had escaped her coif.

She turned her face to press a tender kiss to his rough palm and all the air flooded from his lungs. He wrapped her in a suffocating hug.

“Nothing’s changed.” She felt him hum the certainty into her hair. “Distance has only made me more sure.”

Her mouth was on his in a flash, pink and pressing as if swallowing his words could make them truer. Against his chapped lips she could feel the wind and sand of his past months and yearned to soothe him.

He pulled away to embrace her tightly once more, this time lifting her feet from the ground. “Why, have you changed your mind?”

She dug her fingertips into his hard back, brought her mouth to his ear. “I love you still, _mon couer_.”

“By Andraste, there are no sweeter words.” His scruffy face fell upon her in joyous kisses, teasing giggles from both of them.

Fresh though it was, theirs was a straightforward love. She had seen enough of courting to distrust its facade, and the word  _amour_  had spilled from her lips so easily when he cradled her face and kissed her that she would not refuse herself the promise it held. He had been awestruck by the confession, though no less enthusiastic. It was his romantic streak that took her by surprise. A self-professed brute who cared not for fashions or delicacies, and yet he brought her flowers and pressed gentle lips to the back of her hand. And he looked her in the eyes when they fucked. Refused to call it a “fuck.”  _“Love making,”_ he insisted as they held each other to sleep, with so much quiet assurance that she began to believe him. In court it had always been casual fucking, shared experiments amongst the heirs to vast fortunes, perverse distractions because they _could_. With _him…_ it was sobering and earthy and made her tremble.

He leaned back just enough to meet her stare. “I brought you a…what did you call it? Souvenir?”

She clicked her tongue and gave his chest a teasing shove. “I was only joking. You should not have gone to the trouble.”

“It was no trouble,” he insisted, nuzzling his nose beneath her ear, encouraging her to sway lazily with him. “It’s not much. There’s not much out there to choose from.”

He reached into the open vest he wore and plucked a flower from his pocket. Sharp, pink petals, gossamer and gilt in the very center where pollen still pooled. She took the stem between thumb and forefinger, as he explained.

“They grow in the desert, bright as you like when the unforgiving sun hits them. I would stare at the patches of them in the distance and think of you, just as delicate and bright. Colorweave, they’re called. The scouts–”

“This is Colorweave?” she interrupted. “This little pink thing is Colorweave?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“It’s common gossip amongst Orlesian courts. You know how we are, always drawn to base pleasures.” It was self-deprecation, but it was worth his sly grin. “Of course, no one has actual experience with it…just fanciful legends.”

She recalled the tales: a tea brewed of Colorweave petals drawing imbibers into a gentle state of blurred sensations. Colors scented like perfumes, sounds that tasted like fine liquors on the tongue, textures that vibrated. A raucous Nevarran princess had visited Halamshiral one year with claims that her lover’s kiss sounded like high winds on the ocean after she drank the tea.

He fingered the petals of the flower as she held it. “We don’t have to…I mean, I’ll be just as pleased if you press it in a book and look at it when I’m far off and you miss me.”

The sincerity in his whisper drew her hands to his hair, not much drier than it had been when he first arrived. But it was soft, like him, and just as thick. Courtly lovers were fine and good and notoriously elegant, but wispy. Rylen was solid. Hard. Bulky from training, tanned and rough, and she felt all the more delicate for it. She had never felt particularly delicate. Short, no doubt, but hippy and bottom-heavy. Her fingers weren’t slight or graceful. Her face was elegant enough to make her a passable courtier, and she’d been reminded since her first bleed that she’d bear children with ease. But her form had never felt more natural, more belonging to her than when it was pressed to Rylen’s.

Her hands dropped from his hair to press flat against his chest. “Do we steep it?”

In turn, his hands held either side of her waist, fingers running against the boning of her corset and he grinned. A full face grin, etching curves at the corners of his lips and rays at the corners of his eyes. “Most of the scouts just chewed the petals. One at a time.”

She plucked one petal, tempted to recite the game from her childhood. “He loves me,” she whispered, pressing the petal against his tongue, velvet to velvet. She plucked another. “He loves me,” she repeated, placing the match between her teeth where it tore like tissue. To her surprise, it had no taste, and a dismissible, airy texture.

“Do I look funny yet?” He asked, mid-chew.

She held his chin, running her thumb briefly over the black tattooed lines. “Funnier than usual?”

“Och, you wound me! I’d hoped you found me handsome.”

Her thumb moved up to his teasing pout. “Knee weakingly so.”

He pressed his lips forward to kiss her thumbprint. “Are you prone to swooning?”

“Will you catch me?”

All coy flirtations fell away when he wrapped his arms snug around her and pulled her close. “Always.”

Nearly a foot’s difference in height made kissing him a full-body effort, but she was glad to climb him, then, tangling her skirts around their legs as she pulled his face down to hers. She offered her open mouth willingly, hungry for as much contact as possible, and was surprised to find his tongue cool until she recognized peppermint; he’d chewed peppermint leaves in preparation, clean and fresh to greet her. But it was the scratch of his stubble that stirred her desires, the callouses on his hands, catching in the lace of her gown, that frenzied her breath.

He locked his forearms beneath her ass and lifted her before turning his attentions to her neck. She wished desperately that she could see what his mouth looked like, wide against her throat. Something smelled of peaches. Peaches and honey.

“Maker, you smell _incredible_ ,” he whispered, short of breath. “Summer. Ripe, heavy fruit. What is that?”

His voice burned low like flaring kindling and the heat of it made her dizzy. “I thought it was you.”

His nose tucked behind her ear, he hummed. “I have to taste you, Maggie.”

Until now, their intimacy had been conventional. More kissing than her lungs could manage, but never enough. Slow, reverential love-making. The occasional rushed quickie when time worked against them. But she had often dreamt of his head between her thighs, his well-practiced mouth tending to her, and that _nose_ pressed firm against her.

She was not surprised by the whine that escaped her. “To the bed.”

They undressed one another slowly, but it wasn’t teasing. It was ritual. Colorweave in their systems, skin-on-skin seemed to vibrate and bloom. The lean muscle and tendons of his forearms vined and twined and he was the shade of cedar and she was sure that he was born from the earth. Her own body felt like the swell of wave and she understood, then, that it was a swell because it was swollen with energy and anticipation and the desire to crash into foam. If only she could breathe deeply enough, she would swallow the both of them whole, carry such reverence with her always.

Flat on her back, his body cocooned around her was warmer, softer, finer against her skin than the richest garment she owned. And when he rolled to his side to stop from crushing her, he ran his hand down her thigh and under her knee as if she were a tender sculpture that he never thought he’d be permitted to touch. His mouth played at hers like an instrument, drawing chords from her.

His lips moved from hers to the hidden underside of her jaw, pink and coffee cream. And then to her clavicle, barely legible beneath a layer of warm softness, where he latched his lips. With each inhale, her chest swelled, her breast caressed his prickly chin and it pained her that he could not be kissing her everywhere, always. She guided his head to rest between her breasts and he laughed at her impatience or perhaps at his own eagerness. But he spoke, too: a benediction that he would gladly suffocate against her bosom. The effect took, and she giggled, so that he could tear it from her with teeth buried gently into soft flesh and a barely audible moan of his own from the depths of his trunk. And again, there was nothing funny–it was all golden fog, the smell of a growing fire, and the miracle of him clung to her, muscles rolling and tensing and energy against her.

When had his mouth arrived between her thighs? When had she laced his hair between her fingers and called him love, over and over? Profanities, too: drawn out _fucks_ and _shit_ through clenched teeth, and blessings to Andraste for such enthusiasm and ardor and warmth on his tongue. The black lines on his chin were ink and nothing more, but they quivered and leaked heat and everywhere they pressed bloomed honeysuckle. He swore that she tasted of silver and the yellow glow of a full moon. He groaned and hummed and the scratch of his face against her thighs turned into the muffled crash of waves from a distance and the rustling of tender leaves when the first warm rain fell and she was spring and new life and a thousand thousand feverish embraces held tight _tight_ –

…and when she was limp and loose, she pulled his head up to her face and kissed all of her vigor into him, _mon couer, mon couer, mon couer. Let me see if you taste like sunset._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you SO much for reading.
> 
> I've wanted to write something for Rylen for so long, and I experience mild synesthesia...so when a fellow writer recommended working the two together, I couldn't resist.
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


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